BACK PORCH

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 14, 1996

BRADLEY INMAN'S story on conflicts between regulatory agencies and developers over environmental cleanup problems presents an excellent profile of the mess many cities face today (Examiner, March 31).

The source of the difficulty began in the '70s with the determination of environmentalists and government agencies to solve problems overnight that were a century in the making, whose health effects were not clearly understood and whose cleanup technology was undeveloped.

Fortunately, the ice is beginning to break. We know that in many cases the health impacts are insignificant or close to nonexistent, so the problems don't have to be solved yesterday.

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When it is clear that many contamination problems will degrate over time if we leave them alone, a fact known to many scientists even before Lawrence Livermore Lab proved it recently, the regulators should not force everyone to spend a fortune cleaning them up. In fact the federal and state environmental protection agencies are more and more open to this approach and newer technologies that are less expensive than trucking out thousands of tons of dirt to distant locales.

The most distressing stumbling blocks are agency heads who do not make it abundantly clear to their subordinates that their job is to work out a reasonable plan, not stick to old unworkable, uneconomic procedures. And finally, developers and city agencies should have people on their staffs who know how much cleanup jobs should cost.

Too many environmental engineering firms often don't recommend the most economic cleanup or charge exorbitant prices for fairly simple work.

I believe if the cleanup process is rationalized, economic and done over time, the problems of present and past owner liability will not loom so large. Based on what has happened in recent years I am somewhat optimistic about the future of environmental cleanup in the cities. Joseph Petulla Professor emeritus and founding director Environmental Management Graduate Program University of San Francisco Berkeley

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